Elon Musk Harpooned Baseload Power

Historically, the combination of inflexible power supplies with highly variable demand has been resolved through a somewhat complicated system for buying and selling power, with variations from one country to another. Typically, there are long-term power contracts, promising power at a price over periods that might be many years long. There are shorter-term contracts, looking at delivering power a year, a month, a week, or even a day, into the future. Since even these do not make it possible to match power to demand, there are spot prices for immediate delivery that are bid at intervals; in some places the intervals are as short as five minutes.